AMS Assembly wants Harvey Rosen to be the next mayor of Kingston.
The endorsement vote came last night at Assembly’s meeting in City Hall, and was the first time in recent history the student government threw its weight behind a candidate.
AMS Municipal AffairsCommissioner Ryan Quinlan-Keech said the AMS felt strongly about endorsing a candidate, but doesn’t want to make up students’ minds for them.
“There was considerable by the AMS General Assembly to endorse,” he said. “[But] we will be
under no circumstances portraying ourselves as God-like figures.”
AMS President James Macmillan agreed that the primary goal of the endorsement is to engage students in the election. “It wasn’t to get somebody elected, it was to educate students,” he said.
The endorsement means AMS municipal affairs commission volunteers can help with the incumbent Rosen’s campaign, that he receives positive publicity from the AMS and written endorsement for his campaign material.
An AMS committee spent the last two weeks interviewing and grading mayoral candidates and candidates running in Sydenham and Williamsville wards in preparation for the Nov. 13 municipal election. The committee was comprised of President James Macmillan, Municipal Affairs Commissioner Ryan Quinlan-Keech, ComSoc Vice-Present (External) Amanda Chan, ASUS representative to the AMS Michael Ceci, EngSoc External Communications Director Charlie Scott and CE SA President Whitney Jackman. They gave each candidate a letter grade and recommended to Assembly that they endorse Rosen for mayor and incumbent Ed Smith for Wiliamsville.
The committee didn’t recommend endorsing a Sydenhyam candidate because they felt no candidate was strong enough to deserve AMS upport. The vote ed with 25 Assembly voting in favour of the motion, four opposed and five abstentions. Smith will receive the same student as Rosen.
The committee gave Rosen an A, saying in their report he’s “well-educated on Queen’s student issues, seems much more open to student issues than in the past,” has “highlighted the importance of female safety on and off campus” and “apologized for the ‘water cannon’ comment of 2005,” in which he suggested Kingston Police use water cannons to deter students from partying on Aberdeen Street during Homecoming weekend.
Among Rosen’s weaknesses, the committee noted that “his track record as Mayor is notas pro-student as we would have originally hoped” and he’s “very centred on the issue of student village improvement [but] it would have been great to have seen a broader spectrum of ideas.” Mayoral candidates Kevin George and Rick Downes received a B+ and a C, respectively. In Smith’s evaluation, the committee cited his “willingness to treat area surrounding Queen’s differently than [the] rest of [Kingston] …” One of Smith’s listed weaknesses is that he “sometimes can be overly political, to the detriment of student interests.”
Andrew Goodridge, ArtSci ’07 and also running in Williamsville, received a D+ grade from Assembly. The committee still graded Sydenham candidates but refrained from endorsing one. Alex Huntley, ArtSci ’08, received a B+, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, ArtSci ’07 received a B, incumbent councillor Floyd Patterson received a C+ and candidate Bill Glover received an F.
Quinlan-Keech said the committee didn’t find any candidates in Sydenham ward stood out enough to merit an endorsement.
“We didn’t feel, on behalf of students, that we could make an ndorsement, because there was no candidate that was strong enough,” he said. Quinlan-Keech said part of the AMS’s strategy in choosing to endorse a candidate was to encourage students to learn about the debate and question the committee’s findings.
Quinlan-Keech said the AMS chose not to evaluate candidates in other municipal districts because they had a lower proportion of students.
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